High-fidelity radar model

[Northstar98]

Hi everyone,

As I understand it, FlyingIron are utilising ED's ground radar API - while understandable as this is FlyingIron's first attempt in DCS, it does lead to some unfortunate drawbacks, many of which have a significant impact on gameplay. ED's ground radar API is currently the lowest fidelity model present in DCS (surpassed even by the Viggen, released nearly 8 years ago and was the first true air-to-ground radar) and radar models subsequently (and even one prior) developed by 3rd parties significantly raise the bar in terms of fidelity, offering raycasted models that more accurately depict radars. 

This all results in ED's radar model having inaccurate limitations, both in terms of not modelling limitations that should be present and introducing limitations that shouldn't exist.

ED's radar model:

• Doesn't account for beam-geometry at all, meaning:
  • They can unrealistically map from basically 0 out to the instrumented range of the radar, regardless of antenna elevation or aircraft altitude (see here and here).
  • Antenna elevation or different beam settings (for instance, the pencil/fan beam setting in the Hornet) are functionless/broken. To compound this, if you take the picture seen at default elevation and gain, then elevate the radar to its maximum above the horizon and increase the gain, you see very little difference in what's displayed. Conversely, if you depress the radar to its maximum below the horizon, the brightness falls off to 0, despite the fact that the radar should still be illuminating a portion of the ground.
  • In vertical/near vertical climbs the radar can see behind itself, something that's obviously impossible.
• Will not detect aircraft (even low-speed, low-flying ones). While obviously surface-directed radars/modes are obviously not optimised for detecting aircraft - aircraft that are caught in a lobe of the radar producing a skin return powerful enough to be detected should be displayed, espeically when the A-7E's APQ-126 is a pulse-only radar and has no motion filtering (like the F-4E).
• Is completely immune to jamming. While ships don't feature anything EW related (apart from radars), low-flying bombers can currently be used as semi-functional approximates (though their jammers aren't powerful enough to completely hide ships). The RDI's ground-mapping mode (Mirage 2000C), the PS-37/A (AJS 37 Viggen) are all affected by jamming and produce jamming returns.
• Is completely immune to sea clutter (Heatblur's F-4E even takes polarisation into account here).
• Doesn't model sidelobe returns.

Edited March 10 by Northstar98